Reflections on the Teaching of Vatican II Through the Magisterium of John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis

Monday, July 02, 2012

Closing Statement of Socially Responsible Investment Debate

The real burden of
the debate from my perspective is the question: Are the crises of today crises
of the morality of specific investments, or rather are they crises about God,
and therefore, about the working person as image of God. Man experiences being
the image of God, and therefore becomes conscious of God, by making the gift of
himself in ordinary work. Benedict XVI remarked in 2006 “that the unresolved issue of
Marxism lives on: the crumbling of man’s original uncertainties about God,
himself and the universe. The decline of a moral conscience grounded in
absolute values is still our problem today” (understood: in
the West).

In the case of the
economy, are we attempting to inject a patina of morality into a moribund
economic structure built principally on the Unencumbered Self and profit, or
are we being called to discover a new attitude toward work and mechanisms of
ownership as in Mike Winn’s Hollister Corp.? Even if we get the morality of
individual investments right (for a time), will we have changed that
“unresolved issue” of God – the experience and consciousness of God - that
broods over us? This is the real challenge that we should be debating

As
a son of the spirit of St. Josemaria Escriva, I must repeat his Magna Charta call
to find God precisely in work: “There is something holy, something divine hidden
in the most ordinary situations, and it is up to each one of you to discover
it.” The “ordinary situations” he refers to is secular work. The
“something” is the Person of Christ that one can become in the exercise of that
work if done with the right intention and generosity. This “becoming” and
“discovering” is the real moral exercise of economic life. The successor to St. Josemaria, Alvaro del
Portillo, remarked that “This doctrine”
–becoming Christ through work –“ is so transcendental that the Church has
wanted to proclaim it solemnly in the last Council and to make it into” –
and here he quotes Pope Paul VI [1]–
“‘the
most characteristic feature and the ultimate purpose of all the conciliar teaching.’”[2]
In a word, the entire Vatican Council stands or falls on the morality of
heeding the universal call to holiness through work.

“The board is set, the pieces are
now in motion, at last we come to it - the great battle of our
age:” J RR Tolkien: